Crisis SIMULATIONS and Exercises

Crisis exercises offer a unique opportunity for crisis management team members to practice their roles and response, to get senior management buy-in to crisis management planning and to validate your end-to-end business continuity arrangements.

Our propositions range from desktop exercises to full-scale crisis simulations and everything in-between. On the left of the scale below, we would describe desktop exercises as an opportunity for the team to become more familiar with an organisation’s crisis plans and structures. Further along the scale the challenge increases, perhaps for teams who already have some crisis experience. At the far right of the scale a crisis simulation contains significant challenges, just as in a real crisis.

Choosing the right type of event to appropriately test your crisis management team and business continuity plans depends on the size of your organisation, budget and experience levels. Our experienced consultants are happy to discuss the options, planning times and pricing for each type.

Engaging events, designed, built and facilitated by the experts…

Using simulated news videos, websites and our social media simulator FaceTweet - crisis simulations give participants a taste of the pressures and challenges of a real crisis. Experienced Crisis Solutions facilitators develop highly engaging and realistic scenarios to allow your crisis management team to respond to the simulated crisis in real time.

We have worked at the highest levels with some of the world’s leading organisations in financial services, entertainment, aviation, manufacturing, retail, automotive, governments and regulation. See the ‘About Us and our Clients’ tab for more details.

What does a Desktop Crisis Exercise look like?

A desktop crisis exercise uses a crisis scenario to allow one or more crisis teams to consider an organisation’s response to a challenging situation. During the design of the exercise we will work with you to build a bespoke scenario reflecting your identified risks and built to replicate how your organisation operates.

An expert Crisis Solutions facilitator will combine an engaging presentation with simulated news videos featuring your organisation on screen to create an event that encourages participants to solve problems as the scenario escalates. Using the advantages of a controlled environment, participants are encouraged to practice their roles and to ask questions during the exercise. So, rather than get to the end of the event and discover that several things went wrong, a desktop exercise allows participants to raise questions such as:

“What is my role in the crisis team?”

“Who is responsible for signing-off external communications?” or

“What is the difference between the Gold and Silver team?

In this way a desktop exercise allows time for the identification and analysis of gaps and misunderstandings in an organisation’s crisis response - something that a faster-paced crisis simulation exercise may miss. Our expert facilitator will wrap-up the event with a debrief, followed by a written ‘Next Steps’ report.

Desktop crisis exercises start from £9,000 plus VAT and are typically delivered face-to-face at your premises, though they can also be delivered online. Enquire...

What is a simulation exercise?

A simulation exercise is the next step up - a fast-moving, challenging scenario to test your organisation’s ability to manage a serious incident. The scenario, which might be a cyber attack, third-party failure, severe weather or a terrorist incident, will be designed to test your organisation’s crisis structure, roles, responsibilities and capabilities in an incident that will have operational and reputational ramifications.

We will work with several of your people to create a genuinely realistic environment. Your subject matter experts will also help us create a virtual world on the day of the exercise, where a ‘Scenario Cell’ will place challenging phone calls and emails into the team/s being tested. Using our purpose-built scenario portal Crisis Cloud™ social media and video news reports - featuring your organisation - will recreate the challenges and pace of a real crisis. Our portal can be accessed anywhere in the world - allowing teams and individuals to participate from anywhere with an internet connection.

To test your organisation’s ability to create and agree essential messaging during a crisis, our portal allows communications teams to upload internal and external statements.

Following the exercise we facilitate a debrief with participants, followed up by a comprehensive report assessing your organisation’s capabilities against our ‘ACID test’ - reflecting our expectations of organisational response gained from 1000’s of exercises with organisations from a variety of sectors.

Simulation exercises start at £15,000 plus VAT - the fee depends on the complexity of the exercise. The exercise is typically delivered face-to-face at your premises, though it can also be delivered online. Enquire…

Looking for something simpler?

For a fixed fee of £2,000 plus VAT we can facilitate a Scenario Discussion with your Crisis Management Team. Using a pre-prepared crisis scenario (e.g. a cyber attack) we will drive a discussion designed to draw out how that crisis might affect your organisation. Using our experience of 1000’s of crisis scenarios your team’s knowledge of your organisation we will facilitate a challenging discussion that ensures a thorough examination of the impacts of a crisis.

Enquire…